1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to managing structured data. Specifically, under the present invention, a dictionary can be generated based on structured data in a format such as extensible markup language (XML) for use in compressing and/or decompressing the structured data.
2. Background Art
Extensible markup language (XML) has become the format of choice for transmitting data over networks such as the Internet. Additionally, increasingly diverse computing devices are communicating with other computing devices that communicate over the Internet. As a result, it is desirable that these other computing devices be capable of communicating data using XML.
However, the character-based format for XML makes it an inefficient format for transmitting data. This becomes a substantial problem when the network uses a low baud rate for communicating the data. In order to reduce the transmission time, the data can be compressed prior to transmission and then decompressed after being received. General purpose compression algorithms such as Lempel-Ziv-Welsh (LZW) can obtain approximately fifty percent compression of typical files. However, these algorithms do not use the structure of XML or other structured data to perform compression. Further, some applications require a higher compression rate to obtain a reasonable transmission period.
As a result, a need exists for an improved solution for managing structured data. In particular, a need exists for a method, system and program product that generate a dictionary based on the structure of the data, and use the dictionary to compress/decompress the structured data.